


Looking

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Patrician & Clerk [16]
Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Complicated Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Secret Identity, Self-Esteem Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 17:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18320237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: “Hullo, Mr Faigle,” Carrot said cheerfully to the man at the edge of the thing, drinking heavily from a glass bottle of water, and he turns to look at Carrot, giving him a smile. “Is Mr Wilkinson not about?”“Vincent’s still at work,” Faigle said quietly, his lips shifting into a slight smile as he turned to look at Carrot and Angua.





	Looking

“Come on,” Carrot said, and Angua fell into step beside him, heading down the street toward the Marquis of Fantailer. It was a decent pub, popular, even if it left its regulars with cabbage ears and bruised faces. Technically, the fighting ring they had around the back was legal, and the _betting_ was legal, too, so long as it was all registered appropriately with the state, and the tax office…

But it was odd.

It was odd, Angua felt, how…

“Hullo, Mr Faigle,” Carrot said cheerfully to the man at the edge of the thing, drinking heavily from a glass bottle of water, and he turns to look at Carrot, giving him a smile. “Is Mr Wilkinson not about?”

“Vincent’s still at work,” Faigle said quietly, his lips shifting into a slight smile as he turned to look at Carrot and Angua. It was… _creepy_ , Angua thought, how much he changed his face. She wasn’t sure how he did it, exactly: all he’d done was take his glasses off, and he didn’t even put on a fake beard or moustache, didn’t even…

It was just a wig, that was all. Angua thought it was a wig, anyway.

You should have been able to smell these things, but Faigle and Wilkinson, they were conscious of stuff like that, and they knew how to fool someone’s nose. Faigle and Wilkinson even _smelled_ different to Drumknott and Vetinari: they smelled like their home in the wizard’s quarter, and Faigle smelt like incense and gingerbeer; Wilkinson smelt like the docks.

If she had any doubts, though, about Faigle and Drumknott being the same person – which she didn’t, because Carrot had told her they were the same people, and she knew he wouldn’t lie to her – they were gone now.

Faigle was shirtless, his knuckles loosely resting on his hips as he looked up at the two of them. Even his body language, as Faigle, was different to Drumknott’s: it was open and confident, warm and friendly and almost extroverted. She wondered, sometimes, if Faigle was more like how he _really_ was, if his behaviour at work, as Drumknott, was the act.

(Sometimes, although she wouldn’t ever admit it, she wondered the same about Carrot on the streets, and Carrot when they were at home together.)

There were so many scars on his body. Angua had seen them before, when Drumknott had been stabbed a few years back, and that de Worde from the _Times_ had come in to interview him. There were a good many burns, from clothes irons or something, and then there were places where the skin had been split open by a cane, by a belt; in other places… There was one distinctive scar from where a broken rib had pierced the skin.

And there was the stab wound, of course, on the shoulder, but in amongst all the others, it just blended in with the rest…

“You fighting?” Angua asked.

“Yes,” Faigle said, with a nod. His smile was so warm – Drumknott never smiled like that, not unless he was on the trains, Angua didn’t think. She didn’t know, exactly, though. She didn’t pay that much attention to him, he was… _Odd_.

“You good?” Angua asked.

Faigle’s smile widened, and he showed his teeth. It was strange, to look into a face you saw two or three times a week, and not recognise it. “Yes,” he said, and she looked at his rough hands, wrapped in bandages. Colon said that his father used to beat him, and that that was why he was scarred up like that, why he was so good at being quiet.

Colon had been drinking buddies with Drumknott’s father, Nobby said. Didn’t like to talk much about it, once the man’d died, and they’d realised what he’d been like at home. They’d never known.

“You’re here to speak with me about something, I presume?” Faigle asked, his eyebrows raising in expectation.

“We’re looking for Tanker Wedding,” Carrot said. “I’ve not seen him about in weeks, but _you_ …”

“I know where he is,” Faigle said. “Your notebook?”

Even his handwriting was different. Angua wondered how he could do that, how he could do it so easily: he wrote with his left hand instead of his right, even though Angua was _certain_ he was right handed, but now he wrote with his left, and his handwriting was _prissy_. Looping and pretty, leaning to the left, not at all like Drumknott’s square, almost mechanically neat hand.

When Carrot walked away, to make conversation with someone, Faigle looked after him, watching him, and Angua asked, “Do you think he’s like you?”

“Not at all,” Faigle said. “Commander Carrot is a good person.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“I know.” Faigle cracked his knuckles, shifting his neck from one side to the other. Muscles rippled under a heavy, surprisingly meaty frame. He looked, somehow, like he was twice Drumknott’s size. “Perhaps you and I are alike, Captain Angua.”

Angua whipped to look at him, and demanded, “What does that mean? What do you mean?”

“We ask questions we shouldn’t,” Faigle said delicately, “simply because we know the answers may will us. It is a flaw we share. At school, I used to spit at my teachers, because I knew a beating would follow.”

“Why?” Angua asked.

“Because I thought I wanted to be beaten.”

“You thought?” Angua repeated. Faigle smiled. Angua swallowed, and she looked to Carrot, making bright conversation with a pair of well-beaten men, listening as they talked, speaking with his own enthusiasm… “What did you really want?”

“Vince!” Faigle called, waving toward the door, and Angua watched the way Wilkinson walked, without a cane, without pause… He caught Faigle by his cheeks, dragging him into a kiss, and Faigle stood on his tiptoes to kiss him back. Wilkinson had a beard, a thicker beard than Vetinari, instead of just the little goatee and moustache.

“Angua… Where’s— Oh, there he is. Well, chuck!”

“Hello, Mr Wilkinson!” Carrot said cheerfully, and she watched the two men shake hands, watched Wilkinson pat Carrot’s shoulder.

“Was that really it?” Angua asked.

Faigle seemed to consider the question, and then he said, “I think… It’s about letting someone else take care of you. Instead of provoking them into hurting you, because you’re used to it.” Maybe the words would be less affecting, if they were in Drumknott’s city accent, in his quiet whisper: in Faigle’s posh voice, at a normal volume, it felt somewhere between unutterably genuine and polished, fake.

Angua inhaled, and Faigle reached out, touched her arm. It wasn’t a big touch: it was just a brush of fingers against her bare skin, his fingers freezing cold, but gentle. She wasn’t sure if it was comforting, exactly, but she appreciated the… _intention_ , she supposed.

“Right,” Angua said, and as she stepped back toward the door, she watched Wilkinson grab Faigle from behind, pulling him up against his chest to kiss the side of his cheek, his temple, making him laugh and punch playfully at him.

She reached out, and she took Carrot’s hand.

He turned to look at her, surprised, but then he smiled, _beamed_ , and he swung their hands together as they moved out toward the door. They didn’t keep holding hands, not once they move down the street, but—

But she held his hand. She let him hold hers, felt the warmth of his broad palm, his thumb dragging over her knuckles. He smiled at her like she was… It was hard to stand that smile, sometimes. She loved it, but it was still too much at times.

They went looking for Wedding.

With Faigle’s notes, they found him within the hour.

**Author's Note:**

> Hit me up [on Dreamwidth](https://dictionarywrites.dreamwidth.org/2287.html). You can send requests [on Tumblr](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask), too. Requests always open.


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